Fate had never been kind to Ji Ning. Wracked by illnesses and infirm his entire life on Earth, Ning knew early on that he would die as a teenager. What he didn't know was that there really was such a thing as life after death, and that the multiverse was a far larger place than he thought.

A lucky twist of fate (one of the few in Ning's life) meant that Ning was reborn into a world of Immortals and monsters, of Ki Refiners and powerful Fiendgods, a world where Dynasties lasted for millions of years. A world which is both greater...and yet also smaller...than he ever could imagine. He would have the opportunity to join them, and in this life, Ning swore to himself, he would never let himself be weak again! The Era he was born into was a Desolate one, but Ning would make it his era.

I am the type of person who likes fiction because it is fiction, people read fiction and they go"it's totally not realistic" I say to those "well duh its FICTION".

I recently started to get into wuxia and xianxia (I don't know how to pronounce either of those words but now I know it when I see it) and I love it!!Why do I love it? Because I have always liked fiction stories where MC is either OP or OP smart. Now this isn't to say OP doesn't have standards because in order to have OP MC you need to have an OP world, with dumb other characters that's the only way it works. It where you have 5 million pop all dumb 2 million somewhere in the middle 1 million way on top and like couple thousand OP.

I have read 3 of I Eat Tomatoes novels, and he's seems to have mastered this but what he lacks is story telling. Each one is the same essentially, (now I like to hear retelling so I'm fine with a slight twist but still the same juice overall) the twist is the characters usually start off differently, either from another world, going to another world or trying to be a god within that world... they all end up having the same goal at some point, but what i like is that each MC, still has their own view based on their past or their upbringing.

To me I Eat Tomatoes novels are like the interim until i find something better. It's average not ground shaking. Its enough to get you through that one rough patch where you feel like there just isn't anything good to read rn. Or if you are waiting for another release from a different novel and you just want that quick distraction this is it. All of the novels have like this up and down period where you feel like you don't want to read it anymore cause its just not enough, but because the MC is interesting enough (although OP, some may not like that) it keeps you guessing like "what is he gonna do next?"

*** I would also like to shout-out that from the 3 novels I have read by I Eat Tomatoes, there doesn't seem to be that common Theme that other xianxia novels have with the "shameless" or "ruthless" tag where they kind of just become douches and end up the classic antagonist (boasting and killing randoms raping and enslaving all) that cannot be beat because they are MC and OP. If you ever read those this is like a whole new world***

Well, this piece is quite good shame IET didnt followed end of Stellar Transformation where his son ran away into other plane.

Well this one piece got quite few volumes but it only becomes better and better like all IET stories. Some may says MC is whole time just training but to tell truth all IET stories got MC which know just how to train,battle and love womens which are from diferent caste but earlier or later these womens love MC anyway.

Ok do you people know when MC from IET stories stops train? .... Of course just after they reach pinacle and you read "THE END" .)

Story starts out slow, much like Coiling Dragon. But I enjoy stories where there is a solid foundation so I dont mind it. It slowly started picking up speed and right now it is one of my favorites. I only keep up with 5 novels right now ISSTH,ATG, MW, TMW, and of course this one. I have read many novels and every now and then I catch up with the others, but this 5 are the ones I read daily. So far I see no major flaws with the story or the characters, everything seems solid and it is very enjoyable.

As the title says, the first 3 volumes are bad. (I'm at volume 12 now)

1. The MC makes no sense - he was supposed to be some sort of saint in his past life, but he has nothing against owning slaves and slaughtering people as if they were lambs

2. The writing style is very poor - It is to that extent that I had to search the manhua to discover how the MC looks like. Are you fucking kidding me?! Thr author seems more preoccupied in describing monsters instead of human characters. As I said, poor writing style. CD and ST were much better

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But afterwards whether you'll get used to the choppy writing or you'll start liking this, I'm not sure. The thing is that most people would not bother with this when such a large part of the novel is bad...I mean we're talking about 3 entire volumes!

At least I had dropped it once before ~ Only recently I picked it up again since compared to the rest of the harem crap out there, this novel is still better.

If one thing surely improves though, it's the action. The adventures Ji Ning goes through during the last 2 volumes were brilliant

And now, the 12th volume seems to be the best of all so far (although there have only been translated 10 chapters until now)

Thinking that this series has received pretty decent ratings from different sites, and coming from Wixia. I felt that I would end up liking this series, however after reading 13 chapters, I have been disappointed. So far, the story has focused on training, not the game, but practice! I do not mind stories that focus on practice, but this is too much. I bet someone might insist that I keep reading, but if it does not catch my attention after 10 chapters, and there is no rising tension.

Very similar setting as other IET works, with the same strong points and the same weakness. MC, just as in Coiling Dragon and Stellar Transformations (his only other works that i have read) is from some sort of noble family, but at the same time, in the big picture, they are not really powerful, just enough to give him all he needs for training in his early stages. This is one of the things i enjoy of his works, the grinding phase.Just as in the two novels previously mentioned he has a grudge against some greater power because they killed his mother or at least caused her injuries that later led to her death.I don't really mind those similarities, what, in my opinion makes all of his works eventually monotonous is the power hierarchy established in his worlds. At the beginning is interesting but then it just takes away all excitement. It really doesn't matter how much you trained or how skilled you are, if the opponent is of a higher rank you have no chance against it, of he is from a lower rank, he is no more than an ant, so you know the result of any fight before it actually happens.In this worlds in theory, it takes really long spans of times to grow stronger, but the author, in order to make things "more exiting" have to power up the mc constantly to allow him to constantly challenge more powerful enemies. Here comes other of IET greater weakness: from the readers perspective, a fight between to lower rank fighters and the fights against to higher rank fighters are exactly the same. And even worse, as the MC gets stronger, he meets beings of incomparable power, who have lived for hundred of thousand of years, or even millions of years... and they behave in the same petty way as the bad guys who are lowest ranked in power and have just lived for a normal human life. And when i say their behavior is petty, i mean that they behave like any generic thug from a gang from any manga, something really weird considering they gain strength by meditating and reflecting over the Dao. Once you have seen one villain you have seen them all, the only difference is that one is able to split a stone while the other can split a planet, nothing else.Its a fun read, for a while, but don't expect nothing new.

This is yet another story for submissive, passive-aggressive losers to fantasize about winning as a loser.

The very premise is that if you live your life being other peoples' work-b*tch (ex: work yourself to death for your parents why don't you?!), then you will be rewarded in the afterlife, 'cos God LOVES men to be submissive b*tches, dontcha know?

So the loser MC uses his past as a submissive work-b*tch to justify his need to be dominant over others in his NEXT life (because he was too much of a pussy the 1st time around, I guess he had regrets, or should I say huge resentment?).

It is indeed a very strange world where fate and karma would want to so reward someone just for being a dumb submissive work-b*tch, but it is thereafter not surprising to see the MC make many dubious moral choices - he is in fact just a wannabe-thug who is finally given powers and luck so OP even a wuss like him can finally stop being everybody's b*tch!

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But even with all that, it was pretty fun for the first 6 books, but the 7th book feels like the author ran out of ideas or inspiration, and hence just decided to re-hash some old stuff from Coiling Dragon:

Spoiler (mouse over to view)

The 'training in the city' arc completely breaks with the tension of the previous books, and has the MC basically drop everyone he has contacts with to go train in some city.

The problem though is that at this point, the story starts to repeat CD, as the MC meets rich friends and benefactors and gets to train at some super-elite school where he can constantly show off his OP skills.

Anyhow, other than being generally miserable at romance, or at offering depth of character, or at detailing interesting friendships (or interesting people), the author also seems to have extremely tacky taste: his sense of the ultimate in style is just MOAR!

So when you need to impress someone? Well, a ceiling made of priceless jewels sounds pretty 'leet, so the author makes it a TEN KILOMETER passageway made of priceless jewels (how practical is that?), or some rich dude has an estate that is a hundred square kilometers of prime downtown real estate, etc.: the ONLY way this dumb and tacky author can imagine class is by increasing the count of expensive things, and sadly he is trying to impress us by doing so at a 'godly' level...

This is a great novel due to how mystical the world feels. They jam packed the story with ancient beings, mythical beasts, etc, and everything is on a massive scale. Ji Ning really feels like a small guy in the vast universe.

Usual Xianxia: there are some epic fights, plot isn't the main driving factor, MC's main goal is to be stronger.

The first book is just training, so try to get to the second book before giving up.

Ok, i'm in the camp that thinks this is the best IET Novel yet. I'm only at C500 though and his other Novels does get weaker as time goes on, especially the last 25% or so. I'm reading this in my own language, its not chinese but we have all the same terminology, definition and stuff. One of the reason why i think its so good because the story is really heavy on Earth and Asian mythologies, where as ST or CD are totally different dimensions, so to speak.

But this is actual why it might not be as good for English readers, as the translations have no way of capturing the original Epicness of the story. For exp.: The "Dao" means so much more in the Original work. It could be your Path, a Way, your Fate, Destiny, Character or True Calling, etc... I have known this word since my childhood but only after reading DE does it seems so "profound" to me. Whenever i read something about the "Dao" in English, i'm just like: its cool but whatever.A lot of the cool stuff is lost in Translation since they require background knowledge that western readers do not have. You can say its a bit less accessible than other IET works.

Spoiler (mouse over to view)

The only thing i do not like is the usual obsession of IET's protagonists with their family and mortality. In other similar stories, the MC left his mortal past behind and accept that his family is mortal and thus, can't accopanny him in his journey. Tomato protagonist are all: Nope, gotta have it all. Nobody ever dies in his story or get resurrected eventually. Hell, even people who are dead before the story even started gets resurrected, ahemmmLinley'smomahemm. Too much effort put into keeping them alive or getting them back from the dead. I liked it at the beginning but after seeing it again and again, i think its like an obsession for a "happy" ending.